Nocturne in D Minor
by Zola1
Summary: A little night music. R/D
1. Adagio con Attenzione

Disclaimer: I don't own Big O, but I love it. I also love getting feedback :)

* * *

_**Adagio con attenzione **_

A spill of liquid notes trickled down the stairs and followed him to the elevator door, seeping under his collar and sending a little shiver down his spine. _That's something new, something I've never heard her play before. _He paused there, listening, trying to recall if he'd seen a sheet of music on the stand. First there had been the cacophony of her wake-up call, and he had responded in the traditional fashion by slamming open the door and growling "I'm up!". He had an early meeting so he went straight to the shower, and when he came out, she was playing something classical, possibly Tchaikovsky or one of the other Romantics. Her eyes were closed and she seemed to be concentrating fully on the sounds, so he hadn't spoken when he passed her on the way to the stairs. And then the music changed.

* * *

_"I don't understand what you mean," she glared at the sheet music in front of her as if it was to blame for her confusion._

_"Play for yourself," he urged. "One you know the notes as the composer set them down, add variations that you find pleasing."_

_"But if the composer wanted it to be played in another way, he would have written it another way," she pointed out._

_"Yet everyone who plays that piece of music does it just a little differently than anyone else," he said. "If you were going to play a concert, you would of course stay quite close to the original. But if you're playing it here for your own pleasure, why not experiment? Maybe you'll end up with something completely new."_

_"Androids aren't creative," she reminded him sourly, "and they don't have feelings."_

_"Strange" he said. "Looking at you now, I wouldn't say you weren't feeling anything. I'd say you were frustrated, and perhaps a bit annoyed."_

_She gave him a startled look. "The pieces don't fit," she said. "Pieces should fit."_

_He laughed. "And when they don't no matter how hard you try to arrange them, that's frustration."_

_She looked down at the piano keys, her expression thoughtful. "I will think about this further," she said._

* * *

The song ended abruptly, bringing his attention to the time. He'd have to get moving if he wanted a cup of coffee and the breakfast Norman was cooking.

* * *

_"The memories mislead me," she said over supper a few days later._

_"What do you mean?" He sipped his wine and set the glass down on the table._

_"They are human memories," she said. "I do not have feelings the way I remember the original Dorothy having feelings."_

_"You aren't the same person, of course it would be different," he said._

_"I never thought of that before," she said._

* * *

"I have an appointment with the lawyers for the Whittaker case today," Roger told Norman as he brought his plate and mug to the kitchen sink. "I don't know how long the meeting is going to run, but I can't see it going much past lunch. Is there anything you need me to pick up on the way home?"

"The dressmaker called a little while ago and said Miss Dorothy's wardrobe was ready," the butler said. "It would be a great help if you could pick up the packages."

"The one on Fourth, right?" At Norman's nod, he headed towards the garage. Perhaps Dorothy would smile when she saw her new clothes had arrived.


	2. Accelerando Disjunct

_**Accelerando Disjunct**_

Dorothy did smile, an almost imperceptible curve of her lips that remained as she modeled the outfits one by one. How strange that a modification that was so very subtle should require an entire new wardrobe.

* * *

_"Now that we have the plans, I'd like to do it," she said. "Norman said it can be easily removed if it doesn't work well."_

_She had been the one to bring it up, after several long conversations with Big Ear. There was a way to upgrade her sensory input in the form of a padded "skin" that covered her entire body. It would give her a true sense of touch, as good as an average human's. Among other benefits, she would no longer have to worry about casual exposure to water. She could bathe or take a swim or walk in the rain without having to take any special precautions. She would no longer be cool to the touch, the covering would insure that the heat she generated in activity would not dissipate quite so quickly, and it wouldn't be nearly as obvious that she was an android._

_The potential advantages were great enough that she felt it was worth trying. _

_"Of course," he said. There was no other possible response. _

* * *

_"My dresses don't fit!" She was sitting on the couch, the puddled folds of Roger's too-large bathrobe making her look very young. He studied her face carefully. There was a difference, but it was very subtle. If he hadn't been looking for it, he probably wouldn't have noticed._

_"It never occurred to me," Norman sounded apologetic. _

_"Can the dresses you have be altered?" It seemed the most practical solution for the immediate problem._

_"I think so," she said. "But I've nothing to wear to the dressmaker's."_

_The humor of it struck him unexpectedly. "I'm sure she'll make a house call," he said. "You can't be the first of her clients to... gain weight."_

_She glared at him. "The new modifications don't weigh more than a few pounds," she said._

_"It's either that or diet," he couldn't resist teasing her a little. _

_Her face unexpectedly relaxed. "This is funny," she said._

_"A little," he grinned. "It's not funny that you have nothing to wear, but it's funny that none of us anticipated it. Of course your measurements would change."_

_"I'll call immediately." A relieved Norman headed downstairs._

_"Do I look any different?" she asked._

_He studied her again. "Let me see one of your hands," he said. She stretched out her arm and the sleeve fell down past her knuckles, which made him laugh. "We'll just fix this," he said, rolling up almost half of the length. He took her hand, pressing his fingers against hers. It felt more or less like a human hand now, and it was comfortably warm. "May I?" At her nod, he turned her arm this way and that, observing how the padding made it seem almost as if muscle was under the skin instead of baked-enamel-on-metal. He lightly squeezed her forearm and observed that it did indeed seem to have the resilience of human skin. "I think," he said, voicing his earlier thoughts aloud, "that if I wasn't looking for it, I wouldn't have noticed it until I actually touched you. Does it feel very different to you?"_

_"Yes," she said. "It's going to take a little getting used to."_

* * *

_The dresses were let out, but there were lines from the earlier seams that couldn't be removed no matter how patiently Dorothy brushed and pressed and steamed. "I think that it would probably be better just to get you some new clothes," Roger said when it became clear that nothing would erase the marks._

_"These are perfectly good still, it would be wasteful to throw them away" she said. "It's only cosmetic."_

_"But it bothers you," he said._

_"Yes," she admitted after fussing with the iron for a few minutes more. "It's frustrating that the mark won't go away no matter what I do."_

_"Then we'll get new dresses," he said. "Save those for days you're just going to be helping Norman around the house-it will keep your new clothes in good shape."_

_"The new clothes," she said suddenly. "I would... prefer... that they not be black." _

_"We'll see," was the best he could commit to._

* * *

_"I like it," she said. "It's much easier this way."_

_"How so?" he asked. She hadn't left the house for nearly a month, so she couldn't be talking about how others reacted to her. The first few weeks had been difficult, so difficult that he wouldn't have been in the least surprised if she had abandoned the idea completely. It was no small thing to suddenly be possessed of a sense you never had before, and it took more than a little getting used to. _

_She persisted, though, and as he had watched her with Pero, he watched her now, running her fingertips over this surface or that, so absorbed in the newness of the experience that she didn't even notice he was there. Two weeks after the modification, she had realized that many of the adjectives humans used had arisen out of the same sense of touch she now possessed. Soft, hard, warm, cold, smooth, rough, velvety, abrasive, silky... with her new direct experience of these sensations she no longer had any confusion about their meaning, no matter how abstract._

_As it had been with Pero, she was changing by the moment, although he was no longer so smugly certain that "becoming more human" was the end result. It was more that she finally had a sort of Rosetta stone that translated things about humans that she had previously found incomprehensible, and each new insight triggered many more, rapidly filling in the previous gaps in her understanding._

_"I don't have to be so careful," she said, recalling him to the conversation. "Norman slipped on some water in the kitchen yesterday, and I caught his arm before he fell. It's happened a few times in the past, and usually my grabbing him quickly like that leaves bruises. He always tells me not to worry about it, he says he'd rather a little bruise than a cracked skull, but I don't like that I hurt him. It's easy to tell now if I'm squeezing too tight."_

_"You'll be cracking eggs before you know it," Roger said, that task having been too delicate for her to handle in the past._

_"I already have," she said._

* * *

The new outfits weren't all black, but he couldn't complain in the face of her obvious pleasure. He especially liked the blue dress, not a pastel blue but a rich, deep midnight blue. "You should wear that one the next time we go out," he said.

"I will," she said, and her smile grew infinitesimally wider

* * *

_"Roger." Her soft call and the feel of her hand against his cheek woke him. He must have dozed off over his paperwork._

_Her fingers brushed over his face again. "It's prickly," she observed, then suddenly pulled her hand away as though she was afraid she had trespassed. "I'm sorry," she said._

_"It's all right," he said, giving her a sleepy smile. Of course she would be curious, she was more accustomed to seeing him clean-shaven. He reached out for her hand and brought it back to his face. "If I let it grow, it would be softer," he said._

_She touched again, then ran her fingers through his hair so gently it was more like a caress. "Like this?"_

_"Not quite," he said. It occurred to him that it was the first time she had ever touched him simply because it pleased her to do so._


	3. Sempre con Tenerezza

_**Sempre con Tenerezza**_

After dinner, they went up to the solarium. She sat down at the piano and he stepped out to the balcony to enjoy a brandy and the cigar one of the lawyers had given him at the meeting. He liked a good cigar, but he hated the smell of smoke in the room when it had gone stale, so he didn't indulge himself very often, and when he did, it was outside. He heard Dorothy begin a piece and then stop, and then move on to something else, and apparently dissatisfied with that too, begin yet another. A short while after that the music stopped and she joined him out on the balcony.

"Not in the mood to play?" he asked, taking a satisfying puff of the cigar.

"I'm having trouble getting the music to sound the way I want," she said. For a wonder, she didn't move away from him or make any comment about the smoke. Maybe the skin protected her from that, too.

"You aren't immune to fatigue or tension," he said. "You should give it a break and try again tomorrow."

"I think I understand what's wrong now," she said, and went back to the piano.

* * *

_"That's pleasing," she said, carefully examining the frame of the hourglass he was preparing to fill with sand. "The shape is harmonious."_

_Roger bit back the chuckle provoked by her solemn assessment. Lately it seemed she was just full of opinions, and to his surprise, they were generally positive, for all that she phrased them awkwardly. "It's very well balanced," he said, equally solemnly._

_"The sand matches well," she offered. _

_The laugh escaped him despite his best efforts. "It's kind of you to say so," he said. "I won't be offended if you find my hobby tedious, though."_

_"It seems tedious to me, but you obviously enjoy it," she said. "I am trying to see it as you do."_

_He almost dropped the packet of sand. To try to put herself into his shoes was a leap indeed. "Are you succeeding?" he said to cover his astonishment._

_"I'm not sure," she said. "It still seems rather pointless."_

_"It may well be pointless," he said. "The enjoyment I get out of it is justification enough."_

* * *

She played scales for a few minutes, warming up, he decided. Scales were tedious to the listener, but before they'd gone on long enough to irritate him, she launched into the piece she'd been playing that morning.

He closed his eyes and let the sound flow through him.

* * *

_"I can always tell when you're trying not to laugh, Roger Smith," she said to him, her voice stern. "Your mouth looks serious but your eyes always crinkle up in the corners."_

_"I thought I was doing better than that," he said, chagrined. _

_"You aren't," she said. "I don't understand why you feel the necessity for such a charade."_

_"I don't want you to think I'm laughing at your mistakes out of cruelty, or that I'm mocking you" he said. "Sometimes you are very funny when you don't mean to be, and I don't want to hurt your feelings by making you think I'm not taking you seriously."_

_"It hurts my feelings that you think that I'm incapable of understanding that," she said._

* * *

The melody swept into a theme that seemed somehow familiar. It took him a minute to identify it as the piece she'd created when Pero was with them, the one that she hadn't played since his death. She repeated the theme, this time much more slowly, and in a minor key. She missed Pero still, and sometimes the sadness overwhelmed all the good memories. The soft, mournful notes somehow communicated this more clearly than if she'd said the words out loud.

_She's playing the things she feels, the things she doesn't know how to say. _

By the time the music came to an end, his cigar was long gone, and the brandy glass emptied. He stayed where he was, wanting time to absorb the things he'd learned from her song.

Some time later, she came back out to the balcony and returned to her favorite spot. He stood up and joined her at the rail. "That was lovely," he said.

"Thank you." She looked out towards the setting sun.

"Had you been working on it for very long?" he asked.

"For my entire life," she said with unexpected humor.

"Dorothy," he said after another long pause.

She turned to face him, a silent question in her eyes.

"I think I understand now." He hadn't intended this just yet, but... He put his arms around her and kissed her gently.

She melted into his embrace, allowing the kiss to deepen. After a long, sweet, moment, they moved apart. "Maybe I'll start a new song," she murmured, resting her head comfortably against his shoulder.

"I'd like that," he said, pulling her in close.

They remained there in companionable silence until the sun had set and the domes in the distance lit up the nighttime sky.


End file.
